A blog that features opinions on all thirty NBA teams, but has a focus on the team in the title.

6/02/2005

Shipwrecked

I would've titled it "And then there were three", but I'm not counting album titles.

I wanted to put "Suns Set", but half of the sports pages in the US will have something similar in today's paperTim Duncan, "Manno Gi-no-bee-lee" (as Al Michaels would call him), Beno Udrih and Bruce Bowen defeated the Amare, Nash, Marion and Corliss's twin earlier this evening in a fine battle. Seriously, where were the rest of the guys? Mohammed was in foul trouble, Parker and Horry were building a house (though Horry's boards helped again) and Barry only got three shots. Tony "Twelve Teams" Massenburg even had to get some PT. Bowen would've been included here too if he wasn't shutting down Q. Thus, Q was shut down and got hurt after. Johnson was helping build that house and Hunter did a whole lot of nothing other than diving into the crowd on that one play. It was almost like 4 on 4, except Beno only played ten minutes. Note to the guy that was the best man at the Piston coach's wedding, if Parker's got a PPS of 0.86 on 21 shots and his backup has one of 2.67, you might want to play the backup more than ten minutes.

Carnival #10Again I return, though this one didn't quite catch the topic of the post. I submitted it to him with the description of, paraphrased, "Basically just a breakdown of what the opponent did wrong in game four". Yet he describes it with what's there. Odd. Whatever, being featured on that isn't something to really complain about. Check out the other stuff on there too.

Swat-MachineWell, so much for my trendsetting. Apparently the Amare block on Duncan from game four is officially the best thing since sliced bread! If you didn't catch it, during game five of the WCF, Nash called it one of the best plays he'd ever seen in a pre-taped segment. Walton agreed completely from the commentary table. Numerous others (can't remember where I heard it, might've been on ESPNews) concurred. Don't get me wrong, I said yesterday (when I reputed Collins's clame) that it was a fantastic play, but jeez! This thing is spreading like wildfire. I guess it's not too terrible, the better the press the NBA gets the better, but it's still getting ridiculous. This isn't Tayshaun's block on Reggie from last year's ECF where he prevented the Pistons from going down 2-0. This is a block that saved a team from getting swept... where they promptly lost in five on their home court two nights later. Maybe it'll stop now that Phoenix is out of it, I can only hope.

Five AliveRemember folks, teams who win game fives in a series tied 2-2 go on to win the series about 85% of the time, or something like that. That's not to say that the opposite is overly rare, the Pistons did it just last year (remember the triple OT game where Chauncey hit the 46 footer to send it into the first OT?) but it doesn't come around often. So it's not must win, but it's close. As said recently, I expect the win anyway.

Skiles not locked in yetI'm sure this will be fixed soon. Something I'm also sure will be fixed soon was that, for some reason, Joe D is also without a contract. I'm sure he'll get a nice fat deal soon, but as to why he has no deal right now I have no idea! This guy is one of the best GMs in the league (if not the single best) and yet they actually let his deal run out before getting around to replacing it. Weird.

Scoop strikes againThis article's written fairly well, much better than his usual stuff. I just really don't agree with his opinions. As usual, quotes:

In the past 15 months since he was traded here, I think I've done four feature stories on him. All saying the same thing: that he's the most valuable player in the League.

Uh... I have to disagree. While the five starters are all very close to each other in overall talent, I personally put him at fourth or fifth on the chart. I mean, you don't have to be the best player on your team to be MVP (as some debate that Nash accomplished this year, not me though) but being in the top two certainly helps. Moving on:

But do the Pistons get that chip without him being him last year? Will they get it without him being him this year? Therefore ... MVP.

Unavailable for comment are the games where Ben was suspended which contained numerous Piston struggles, the games where Hamilton missed and the offense completely fell apart, the games where Chauncey had to bail the team out deep in the fourth and the games where Tayshaun was the most consistent player on the team. There's a reason they're the best starting five in the league... as I said above, they are all very close to each other in overall talent. When one of them disappears, everyone suffers. You can't just pick one guy out of the five and say, "If he's not there, they won't do well!" because it applies to all of them pretty much all the time. Such a fun team to root for.